


the war can wait

by anisstaranise



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Established Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, some mentions of blood and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23375347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anisstaranise/pseuds/anisstaranise
Summary: One night, when they're twelve, Elektra and Matt sneak out of the house. One night just to be kids.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Elektra Natchios
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	the war can wait

**Author's Note:**

> This is written for the [mattelektrabingo](https://mattelektrabingo.tumblr.com) that I signed up for a year ago. Thousand apologies to the mods for my tardiness.
> 
> Bingo prompts: betrothed, canon divergence, circus, just one night.

The floorboards creak two floors down and Matt Murdock sits up in bed at the sound of it. The converted warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen houses Matt and eight other kids, ages ranging from twelve year olds like him to full-fledged hormonal teens, including the one whose footsteps are creeping down to the ground floor. He’d know the sounds of her footsteps anywhere; the sound of her breathing, her heartbeat.

Instinctively, Matt reaches for his blackout glasses and cane, already bolting out the bedroom as quietly as he can even before his cane unfolds all the way to the floor. He sets his glasses on his face while he takes the stairs down two at a time, careful of the step that would squeak under his weight.

Once he reaches the bottom, he turns the corner down the hall just as he hears the tell-tale snick of the kitchen door’s bolt sliding open.

“Elektra,” Matt whispers sharply.

“Shh.” 

“Where are you going?” he asks as he feels her glare on him. A small smile curls on his lips. Elektra is always glaring at him.

“Go back to bed, Matthew,” she says as she slips out the door. Naturally, Matt follows.

“Where are you going?”

Elektra sighs, exasperated, but Matt knows her well enough to know when she’s merely feigning. He knows she’s secretly pleased that he’s here with her.

They turn down the alley and into the main street, but Elektra still hasn’t answered him. He’s about to ask again when Elektra tugs him, gently, down towards the subway station, the high-pitch metal screeching announcing the train’s arrival. Elektra’s laugh floats from ahead of him as he hears her jump over the turnstile.

“Hey!” a man behind the glass booth shouts his protest. 

Matt follows close behind, his cane clanking on the ground. They both slide into the train just as the doors are closing.

He’s laughing along with Elektra when he realizes he still doesn’t know where they’re headed. But then it hits him- he doesn’t much care. He’d follow Elektra anywhere.

Four stops and a couple of blocks walk later, he feels Elektra vibrate with excitement. They’ve finally arrived.

“The circus?” Matt asks as the sounds of the carnival waft from ahead of them. He picks up the scents of caramel apples and popcorns and deep fried corndogs. He pulls a memory from a time when he still had his sight, pictures he’d seen in books, on the tv; the vibrant red and white of the big top tent, the colourful and gleaming costumes of the performers. The closer they get to the entrance; Matt can feel the heat of the many lights warming his face.

“Just one night, Matthew,” Elektra says, almost dreamy. “We should get one night to be kids.”

Matt turns away from the lights and looks towards Elektra. The longing in her voice knocks the wind out of him.

“Just one night not thinking about training and preparing for this unseen war with The Hand,” she continues as they join the line to get their tickets. No jumping turnstiles here, he thinks.

Matt gets it. There’s so much purposeless chaos since he lost his eyesight, his father. He doesn’t know the story that preceded Elektra’s arrival at the warehouse. But he gathers she feels more or less like he does. _Purposeless chaos_. So, he gets it, he gets Elektra’s need to have this one night.

“You are what stands between the Hand and the end of the world,” Stick would say.

When his father had died, it was Stick who took Matt in- cared and fed and clothed him. And most of all, trained him, honing him into a soldier for The Chaste; a group of people sworn to protect the world against the ancient forces of The Hand. Elektra had come to live at the warehouse a few months later and in the two years since, she has become his best friend.

Once inside, he lets Elektra pull him into the tent, towards their seat- but not before buying all the sweets Stick deprives them off. Their mentor says it makes the body sluggish after the sugar high dissipates, the sugar crash making one instantly vulnerable to impending attacks by the enemy. Matt shakes his head at the thought; they’re twelve. They’re allowed the occasional sugar high. He vows to let Elektra have this one night. 

_They_ can have this one night. 

The war can wait.

\--

Sirens blare from the streets below, conversations drifting up and out of windows. The night is loud with life. The city pulses with it; lights and sounds, oblivious to the peril it had been in mere hours ago.

The world is loud, but it’s quieter up here on rooftops.

Matt Murdock removes his cowl, relishes in the way the night breeze bites against his flushed skin. He smiles up to the sky.

“It’s a shame the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen needs a mask,” a voice lilts just out of reach to his right. 

His smile widens.

“It’s safer that way, Elektra,” he quips. It’s something they’ve talked about a million times over, him and Elektra. If they were going to fight The Hand, anonymity is key. That’s how they protect the ones they love. That’s how they protect each other.

“I know-” Elektra replies, tone casual, almost lazy. There’s the hush of metal sliding against leather- and Matt knows she’s holstering her trusted pair of _sais_ against her hips. “- but it’s still a shame to cover up all that pretty.”

“You think I’m pretty?” Matt teases.

“I think you’re beautiful, Matthew.”

It’s the ease of how she says it, the weight of sincerity in them, heavy with love that gets him every time; it makes his breath catch, his heart aflutter.

Matt drops the cowl to the ground absently and strides the short distance to take Elektra in his arms. He feels her hair that’s peaking from beneath the silk scarf she ties around her head tickling his cheek, soft wisps of it billowing in the breeze. And he can smell the coppery tinge of blood on her skin, mingled with the sweet scent of her sweat. The blood, thankfully, isn’t hers. 

Matt feels the bruises on her body, the way it vibrates differently than when it hasn’t been in a fight with countless operatives of The Hand. He knows her, knows her body well enough to sense the differences.

There on the rooftop, safe in each other’s arms after victoriously thwarting yet another one of The Hand’s cleverly plotted attacks, Matt kisses Elektra. The heat of her mouth on his is dizzying- and intoxicating. It feels like the first time every time, yet it’s as familiar as his very own heartbeat. Like coming home.

They break apart after a moment, breathless and grinning. 

Just then, Elektra turns away from him, something catching her attention. Matt senses her making her way to the edge of the roof, gazing at something in the distance. Naturally, he follows her.

Tuning his senses in the direction of Elektra’s gaze, he finally hears it; the electrical buzzing of hundreds of lights, the infectious carnival music, the joyous excitement of the crowd.

“The circus,” Matt says, awed.

He hears her smile, nostalgia rolling off the both of them.

“Do you remember that circus we snuck out to when we were twelve?” Elektra asks, her gaze still set far ahead, beyond the limits of Hell’s Kitchen.

“Yeah,” Matt breathes. 

Elektra turns to face him now, the ground crunching under her boots when she moves. “It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I never did thank you for that.”

Matt coughs a laugh, surprised. “Thank me? You snuck out and _I_ followed _you_.”

“I knew you would,” she says matter-of-factly as she drapes her arms over his shoulders.

Matt thinks back to that night; how Elektra’s footsteps were enough to lure him out of bed. He chalked it up to curiosity then. Curious to know what this force of a girl would be up to in the middle of the night, enough to risk the wrath of their foster guardian and mentor, Stick. But two decades later, Matt’s still following her, gravitates towards her the way the tide finds the shore. He knows better now. 

He knows it’s loyalty- he knows it’s love. And he knows, just as he did that night while sitting next to Elektra in that grimy subway car; he’d follow Elektra anywhere. Always.

It goes hand in hand- that realization- and the vow they’d made time and time again: _wherever you run, I run with you._

Matt pulls Elektra closer, her body warming the reinforced fibre of his suit. Just for her, he says it aloud. “Wherever you run, I run with you.”

Elektra smiles against his lips, stealing kisses in between breaths. 

“You better, Matthew,” she says into his skin, “You’re the one who chose to be betrothed to me when you got down on one knee and all.”

Matt huffs a laugh. Betrothed.

“The word ‘engaged’ seems too simple for us,” Elektra had said the night he had proposed they spend the rest of their lives together; as husband and wife. “We’re more than engaged.”

Matt had no reason to protest. They _were_ more, something forged in the two decades of fighting side by side, always watching each other’s six in this war they shared. Best friends. Partners. _Betrothed_.

They spend a moment longer there on the roof, the endless sounds of night drifting up from below. It amazes Matt how the world never ceased its movements; not when an accident robbed him of his sight, not when his father’s life ended- and not even when the ground opened up earlier that evening to bring forth a mythical beast from the earth’s belly, hell bent on destroying it.

He supposes it’s a lot like his need to be the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen; it’s a drive, a constant forward momentum, chaos given purpose. Stick may have honed the fire stoked by all the things he had lost and made him into a weapon, then threw him into a war, but it’s being the vigilante the city dubbed the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is what gives him purpose. This need; it won’t stop, not even for the end of the world. 

_A constant forward momentum_.

As is his love for Elektra.

Gently, Elektra tugs at his hands, pulling them in the direction of their apartment.

“Let’s go home, Matthew.”

He follows her easily. _Home_.

They saved the world tonight. They deserve to go home and be two people in love, _betrothed_.

Matt is certain there will be more battles to fight once the sun rises; much like the world will never cease moving on, moving forward, the war will rage on.

But just for tonight, the war can wait.

\--END.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.  
> Comments are welcomed. I thirst for comments.
> 
> And thank you to


End file.
